Posted by Christ_empowered on April 9, 2016, at 20:21:19
In reply to Re: Mad in America, posted by Hello321 on April 9, 2016, at 19:57:30
"Mad in America" is a book about the (mis)treatment of the mad among us in the US. Its been forever since I've read it, but it draws on some old psychiatric literature (which can be terrifying, at least the stuff they use in the book) and goes from moral treatment (quakers, 19th century) to brain damage as treatment (shock, lobotomy, etc.) to the modern day...
...in which, it appears, not a whole lot has changed. There's some analysis of the studies used to get the atypicals approved and widely prescribed, there's some patient stories, etc.
The book itself is good...well-written. I mean, it is somewhat slanted. Lobotomies, for instance...not the best procedure, definitely overused, but there were, now and then, some good outcomes. Of course, for the bad outcomes...what to do? The brain tissue has been destroyed, right? Right.
I did learn a lot. Shock="annihilation therapy," at least back in the day. That's honest..blunt, even. I did find it interesting how the anti-psychiatry movement made the shrinks more...clever, I suppose, in their use of language. The term neuroleptic is now rarely used, even in the literature. EST (ElectroSHOCKTherapy) of the Max Fink era has given way to ECT (ElectroCONVULSIVETherapy) of our current era...and ECT apparently doesn't fry the brain, or at least...that's not why it works. Fink was pretty blunt back in the day...brain damage was part of treatment.
The website is interesting, but just as hardcore, drug-oriented shrinks have their dogma and group think, so too do hardcore anti-psychiatry people. I feel more able to post here about the pros and cons of psychiatry (from my perspective, for my own life) than I do there...
I'm done now. :-)
poster:Christ_empowered
thread:1088004
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20160331/msgs/1088011.html